Marietta Daisies Garden Club

From Our Garden to Your Table

Reaping the Rewards at Park on Polk

by Katryn Taylor

There is something especially rewarding about planting a garden, tending it through the seasons, and finally gathering around a table to enjoy the fruits or in this case, the herbs of your labor.

Marietta Daisies members recently did just that during a special farm-to-table culinary presentation, featuring fresh herbs grown in our very own Park on Polk (POP’s) Pollinator Habitat and Herb Garden.

The demonstration began right where all good garden stories should, in the garden.

Freshly harvested herbs from POP’s were gathered together to create a traditional

bouquet garni, a fragrant bundle of herbs used to gently infuse stocks, soups, and other dishes with fresh garden flavor.

Our bouquet garni was used to prepare a homemade vegetable stock, which then became the flavorful foundation for a comforting White Bean Truffle Soup. It was a wonderful example of how a handful of herbs grown just down the road can transform simple ingredients into something truly special.

And the goodness didn’t end with the tasting! Each member received a Ball jar filled with homemade vegetable stock to take home, ready to recreate the White Bean Truffle Soup or perhaps inspire a favorite soup, stew, sauce, or culinary creation of their own.

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Next, members were introduced to Perilla, another herb successfully cultivated in our POP’s Garden. A member of the mint family, perilla is widely enjoyed in Asian cooking. Known as kkaennip in Korean cuisine and closely related to the herbs commonly known as shiso in Japanese cuisine, its leaves offer a wonderfully distinctive earthy flavor with hints of mint, basil, and licorice.

We demonstrated one of the simplest and most delicious ways to enjoy the fresh leaves:

as a garden-grown wrap.

Thinly sliced ribeye was sautéed with salt, pepper, garlic, and the fresh juice of a lemon, then tucked inside the freshly picked perilla leaves. A dipping sauce of Asian white vinegar and mushroom soy sauce accompanied the wraps, with red pepper flakes and sliced scallions suggested as easy additions for those wishing to add their own touch of flavor.

Then came everyone's favorite part, the tasting! Members sampled both culinary creations, experiencing first hand how the herbs we have watched grow throughout the year can become part of something wonderful at the table.

For those who were unable to attend or for members who would simply like to revisit the demonstration, a video tutorial will be available on the Marietta Daisies website, allowing everyone to follow along and bring a little of our POP’s Garden into their own kitchens.

This gathering represented so much more than a cooking demonstration. It was the

culmination of a true labor of love planting, watering, tending, harvesting, learning, and finally sharing.

Our companion Herb Garden, nestled within the larger Marietta Daisies Pollinator Habitat at Park on Polk, beautifully illustrates how one garden can give back in so many ways.

It provides food and habitat for our pollinators, adds beauty to our community, offers opportunities for education, and now provides fresh herbs that can make their way from our garden beds to our family tables.

It is a lovely reminder of why we garden in the first place: to nurture, to learn, to share, and to enjoy the harvest together.

We planted it. We tended it. We harvested it. We shared it.

And that is truly farm-to-table, the Marietta Daisies way.